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by roebling



Series: Calling the Moon [6]
Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, M/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2011-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 11:19:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roebling/pseuds/roebling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just do it right<br/>Make it perfect and real<br/>Because it's everything<br/>Though everything was never the deal</p><p>- Home, LCD Soundsystem</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> More werewolves! I haven't given up on this universe yet, and I've got some bigger things in the planning. Many, many thanks to Em for the beta and general encouragement. I can't believe this is the first thing I've posted since March.

Brendon’s sister Kara sent out a bi-monthly newsletter updating friends and relatives about the goings-on of the Kimball-Uries. (She’d hyphenated when she’d married, to their mother’s chagrin). She had a penchant for clip-art and had recently become something of an amateur photographer. Her favorite subjects were her children. She photographed them, dressed in coordinating outfits, in a variety of scenic outdoor locations. In this latest edition, she shared the happy news that the family was going on a two week vacation to the Bahamas. Smiling crabs wearing leis and leaping dolphins punctuated the news. Just below, there were a series of photographs of the new addition she and her husband had put on their house. The brand new wood floors gleamed.

Brendon scowled at his laptop. He scowled at his sister’s stupid, perfect life. He actually liked Kara a lot -- she was his favorite sibling, and the only one who'd kept in touch with him during those bad months right after he'd left home, when he wasn't sure if he'd ever see any of them again. She was pretty cool, and he liked her husband too. But Brendon hadn’t gone on a real vacation, to some distant, exciting land, since elementary school, when he’d been dragged along when his dad had gone to Washington D.C. for a surveyors conference. He didn't remember much about the trip but his parents had taken a picture of him, big-eyed and red-faced, crying in front of the Lincoln Memorial. They thought it was hilarious and brought it out at all sorts of holiday gatherings and family parties.

Whatever. Huge stone dudes were scary.

It wasn’t likely he’d be going on a vacation any time soon. The car had broken down the week before, and it had taken half of the humble nest egg he and Spencer had painstakingly squirreled away to get it fixed. Two weeks before that the dishwasher had broken and flooded the entire first floor and yeah, the place was a rental and technically the landlord was responsible, but there was no way that Brendon was going to ask Myrtle, the sweet octogenarian who owned the house, to replace his X-Box and a pair of Spencer’s fucking leather shoes. That debacle had eaten up an entire paycheck.

Brendon didn't begrudge his sister her happy little life, not at all. It was just that he wished the good fortune genes in the family had been a little more evenly distributed. It seemed like sometimes he and Spencer were never going to get ahead.

He sighed, deeply.

Spencer, who was standing at the sink doing the breakfast dishes, looked back over his shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow.

Spencer could do a mean quirked eyebrow. Brendon said sometimes that he ought to be in show business with eyebrows like that, which either caused Spencer to blush in a really hilarious way or get huffy and annoyed. Which was kind of fine, because Brendon sort of liked to get under his skin.

“Just reading the latest edition of the Kara and Michael’s Life Is Totally Awesome Digest.” He leaned against the table and propped his chin up with his hand.

Spencer didn’t say anything. He’d listened to Brendon gripe about this before, especially after Brendon called his mother and had to endure an hour of her bragging about how accomplished and wonderful and successful and brilliant all of his brothers and sisters were. He agreed with her, actually, but it stung that she always ended those conversations with a gentle reminder that if he ever needed anything, he could call.

Brendon had caught on long ago that his parents though he would never be happy because of the choices he’d made. He ought to be used to it, but honestly, their insinuations still stung.

“Maybe we should move,” he said, staring down at the cracked linoleum floor.

“What?” Spencer asked, frowning. “Move? I thought you loved this place.”

Brendon shrugged. He did kind of love the house: it was the first place he’d ever lived where his name had been on the lease, and he’d met Spencer here. There were happy memories woven into every inch of the grubby carpet, into every squeaky door, into every dated appliance.

But Brendon knew he could never ask his parents to visit him here. He knew that if they saw where he lived, their faces and voices would be filled with barely disguised pity.

“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, it’s pretty awesome, but it’s kind of a shithole.”

Spencer frowned. “This is coming out of nowhere,” he said. “Weren’t you just talking about digging up the back yard so we could plant a vegetable garden next year?”

Brendon drained his coffee mug. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “But the lease is up in July, and there are other houses with back yards. We could at least look around. Maybe the most perfect place in the entire world is waiting for us.”

“You’re jealous of your sister’s house,” Spencer said evenly. He was drying the dishes now; the dishwasher still hadn’t been repaired, and they took turns cleaning up.

“No,” Brendon protested. “Totally not. That place is straight out of Martha Stewart. I just …” He loved the life he had with Spencer. That wasn’t the problem. He didn’t want Spencer to think that there was something wrong with the way things were; he just wondered if maybe they could be better, somehow. “I just think we could find someplace nicer, is all.”

Spencer set the plate he was drying into the rack. “We could look,” he said. “Sure. But if it gets to the point that you try to sign us up for Househunters, you’re totally on your own, dude.”

Brendon laughed, startled out of his sour mood. “No reality TV. I promise. I’ll just check out what’s on Craigslist and wherever. And if we don’t find anything, we can just stay.”

“Sure,” Spencer said. “Just tell me when and where to be.”

Brendon got to his feet and wrapped his arms around Spencer’s waist. Spencer always indulged him in his need to touch, to hug, to hang on tight. He leaned back just a little bit into Brendon’s embrace. Brendon rested his chin on Spencer’s shoulder.

“Thanks for putting up with me,” he said. “You’re awesome.”

“It’s your lease,” Spencer said. “I’m just along for the ride.”

***

“I can’t rent an apartment,” Spencer said suddenly, quietly, dispersing the silence.

It was night. They were in bed, trapped in the pocket of heat under the covers. Brendon slid his hand down Spencer’s side, resting at the narrow spot just below his ribs. Their toes touched. His eyes were closed, and his forehead was pressed against the nape of Spencer’s neck. He wondered if he was dreaming, or if Spencer had really spoken.

“I’m not …” Spencer curled in on himself, shoulders and collarbones tucked, knees bent. Brendon held him close.

“I’m not a real person,” Spencer said. His tone was urgent but he spoke very quietly.

Brendon smiled, even though he knew Spencer couldn’t see it. He slid his hand across Spencer’s belly, Spencer’s chest, found the place where Spencer’s pulse was nearest to the surface of his skin.

“You feel pretty real to me,” he said.

His hand found Spencer’s; their fingers twined together.

“You know what I mean,” Spencer said. There was the slighted edge of peevishness to his voice; that was fine, that was OK, much better that then despair. “I can’t co-sign a lease with you. I don’t have a work history. I don’t have a real job …”

“I know all that,” Brendon said. He did. He knew. He had learned so quickly that there were uncommon limits. “I don’t care.”

“It’s not fair,” Spencer said. He rolled onto his back. His profile was crisp and pale in the darkness. “It’s not fair to you. You should care. You’re going to have to do everything alone.”

“It’s not your fault,” Brendon said. “And I know you, Spencer Smith. There’s no way you’re going to let me pick out this place on my own.” He smiled. Their hands were still clasped, resting over Spencer’s belly button. “You’re going to find like, five dozen things wrong with every place I like.”

“Not true,” Spencer said. “You just forget to think about things like how old the appliances are and where the nearest grocery store is and …”

“See,” Brendon said, grinning. He wormed closer to Spencer. They were pressed flush together.

Spencer ‘humph’-ed, annoyed. “It’s harder on you than it should be, because of me,” he said, but he turned his head and pressed his lips to Brendon’s forehead. “I’m sorry. That’s not fair.”

“I don’t care,” Brendon said, and he held Spencer closer.

***

They didn’t check out any apartments right away. There was a lot going on. Spencer was pretty busy with the dog walking. He had a dozen clients that kept him busy most weekdays until late afternoon. Brendon was taking three classe that semester, and finals were pretty close. He had to find extra time to work on the tea pot he was supposed to be making for Ceramics, and he had standing plans every Wednesday to go to the library and study with a few kids from his history class. That was on top of regular class time and working five nights a week and hanging out with Shane and everything else he forgot about until it was actually time to do it.

But the idea of a new apartment had taken root in his mind. He had started to read a bunch of house decorating blogs, which was kind of weird and made him worry he was turning into his mother. He’d never before taken the time to worry about whether his couch clashed with his curtains, and he wasn’t about to start now, but he secretly really liked the idea of living in a place so awesome that you could show it off online. He started making a list of stuff he wanted to get for the new place, starting with a vintage pin ball machine. If he and Spencer were vegging on the couch after dinner, he would crack open the laptop and wade through the mire of Craigslist for places to go check out on his day off.

It was tough going. Most of the places he saw advertised online were as shitty if not more so than the house he was renting now. The super nice places were either out of their price range or seemed like a scam. Brendon got stood up a few times, too: he lurked suspiciously on the sidewalk for twenty minutes waiting for a certain ‘Thomas’ to show up who never did. He wasn’t sure if house hunting was always like this, or if he was just having a particularly awful time of it. He’d fallen into his current lease, taking over for a co-worker who was moving to Portland. He’d never really thought about how lucky he’d been and how easily it had all worked out.

Not until the second week of May did Brendon finally relent and call a realtor. The woman who took his phone call had a falsely cheerful voice and promised that she had tons of apartments to show that met his requirements.

Far too early the next Saturday morning Spencer woke Brendon and handed him a coffee mug.

"We're meeting the realtor in half an hour," he said.

He was showered and freshly shaved and his hair was combed neatly to the side. He set his hand lightly on Brendon's shoulder. Brendon made a series of incoherent sounds that might generously be construed as words and gulped the coffee.

Fifteen minutes later he too had showered and was dressed and sitting in the passenger seat of the car with his sunglasses on. He slumped over, rested his head on Spencer's shoulder. He had to have been momentarily insane to agree to a meeting this early.

"You can just pick out a place," Brendon said. "Whatever you want. You know what I like."

Spencer smiled, fondly, but slowly pushed Brendon back upright. "I don't think so," he said. "You’re the one who wants to move. I'm just coming along for moral support."

The places that the realtor had arranged for them to go see were downtown, closer to the bar where Brendon worked, closer to the community college. It was a nicer neighborhood, with coffee shops and bookstores and restaurants, not out on the outskirts of the city like where they lived now. The realtor was waiting for them outside a tidy looking brick building. She was blonde and around the same age as Brendon's mother. She looked first at Spencer, then at Brendon, then back at Spencer.

"Do I have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Urie?" She smiled, revealing very large bleached teeth.

Brendon wiped his palm on his pants and he held out his hand for her to shake.

"Uh, yeah," he said. "Just Brendon's fine though."

"And this is?" the realtor asked, turning to Spencer.

Brendon glanced over at him. Spencer's eyes were fixed on a spot on the sidewalk between his toes, and he was strangely pale. Spencer got so nervous at the strangest times.

"This is Spencer," Brendon said. "He, uh ..."

The realtor leaned close. "Oh, don't worry," she said, with a little laugh. "This is a very modern, very accepting neighborhood. You boys will be fine."

Brendon smiled, tight. He and Spencer didn’t usually come off as very obviously couple-y; people who didn't already know them rarely guessed that they were together. Spencer was very keen on physical affection in private, but neither of them were very demonstrative in public. Brendon couldn’t answer for Spencer, but some in some deep corner of his heart when they walked around holding hands, or if he put his arm around Spencer’s shoulder, he tensed, like he was waiting for a blow to fall. It wasn’t a happy feeling, and it was one he tried to fight.

Spencer shook her hand as well. "That's good to know," he said, but it sounded forced.

The realtor either didn't notice or didn't care. She was consulting a dossier of papers.

"I'll show you the apartment on the top floor first," she said, holding open the door for them.

"This building was granted landmark status in 1980. It dates from the ..." She droned on and on.

Brendon didn’t really care about any of that. He quickly stopped paying attention. Spencer followed her from room to room, but Brendon lingered in the living room. There was a wide picture window that looked out over the city. Far off you could see the mountains. The desert light was bright and clean and weightless. The floors were salvaged, wide wooden boards trod by many feet. They’d knocked down walls and opened the place up and it looked like the kind of apartment you saw on television, or in magazines. It looked like the kind of place you’d be proud to have people visit.

It looked like no place Brendon had ever imagined himself living, but there were a lot of things in his life now that he’d never dared imagine.

Like Spencer.

Growing up he'd had no idea what it could be like for two men, together. He'd only heard the fire and brimstone condemnations in temple. After he'd moved out he'd realized that it wasn’t like that at all, but the intense city dating scene had intimidated him. He ran with a fast crowd at first and didn't know any gay guys his own age who were in serious relationships. He didn't know many gay men at all.

What he had with Spencer was what he had never dared imagine as a teenager. It was a partnership. He felt that, really. They had been together for less than two years and yet Brendon never imagined his future without Spencer in it. Spencer filled in the missing pieces.

This apartment was a place where that future could be manifest. Brendon saw them there, sitting on the couch, his head on Spencer's shoulder in a year, in five years, in ten … He saw holidays with his family, nieces and nephews noisy and their parents vexed. He saw his parents there, pleased and proud of the life Brendon had assembled.

"You've seen everything?" Spencer asked, quietly. “Do you want more time to look around? I can distract her.” He tipped his head in the direction of the realtor, who stood near the door scowling at her cellphone.

"I’m good," he said, even though he hadn't seen everything. He'd barely gotten a glimpse of the pocket-sized kitchen, had hardly seen the bedroom, had ignored the bathroom entirely.

He didn't care.

They saw three other places that day. Two were cheaper. One was a rather nice house in a quiet residential neighborhood. There was a backyard and a patio with an open roof. Trumpet vine grew up the beams and the orange flowers draped. Spencer asked all the questions, like Brendon had known he would. Brendon was quiet and tried to imagine what it would be like to live in each of these places, what it would feel like to take the milk from the olive green refrigerator in the house on Center Street. He tried to imagine what it would feel like to go to sleep in the tiny bedroom in the apartment near the highway. Would Spencer be able to sleep with the roar of traffic ever present? He tried to picture their lives in two years, in five, in ten. In none of the other houses did the future seem as readily obtainable as it had been in the first apartment.

They said goodbye to the realtor at the last house and walked back to the car. It was mid-afternoon and warm. Brendon's skin was damp beneath the thin cotton of his tee shirt.

"You hungry?" Spencer asked. He had his sunglasses on and his hands jammed in his pockets.

Brendon started to shrug but realized that yeah, he was kind of hungry.

"That good sandwich place is around here, right?" he said.

"Yeah," Spencer said, staring at a woman who was walking past with her dog. As she disappeared around the corner he muttered, "They ought to make choke collars illegal."

Brendon nodded in agreement. He totally agreed with Spencer but even at the best of times he couldn't quite work up to Spencer's level of outrage about the injustices of household pets. He tried, but he supposed when you spent part of your time as a dog it gave you a different perspective.

The sandwich shop was crowded. Brendon decided he wanted a BLT and staked out a table while Spencer waited in line to order. Brendon ran through the apartments in his head, so he'd have things to say when Spencer asked his opinion (as he knew Spencer would) but he couldn't really remember much about any of them, except the first, and there he only remembered the light in the living room, and the windows, and how happy he had imagined them being.

That wasn't very much to go on.

Spencer brought their sandwiches, a bag of chips, and two open bottles of beer.

"What did you think?" he asked. "There are more places we can go see next week. I thought they wanted way too much for the house. We could get a much bigger place for a grand a month. And the appliances were so old ..."

Brendon chuckled. "Dude, I knew you were going to complain about that."

Spencer looked disgruntled, and took a long sip of his beer. "I like to cook," he said at last. "I need quality tools."

Brendon rolled his eyes and said, "You are a quality tool, Spencer."

Spencer huffed and said, "Fine, wait until the next time you want an omelet and I can’t make it because we’ve got a shitty electric stove from 1975."

"I'm just kidding," Brendon said, even though he knew that Spencer knew he had been kidding.

Spencer smiled. "So, what did you think?"

Brendon took a bite of sandwich and chewed, feigning thought.

"The first place," he said. "I liked the first place a lot."

***

The week they found the perfect apartment, Spencer decided they should clean out the attic. There wasn't much up there -- Brendon hadn't had time to accumulate a lot -- and yet it took them all of one rare afternoon when both were off work to carry all the dusty boxes downstairs into the living room and undo all the packing tape and then argue about whether or not it made sense to keep the broken television / vcr combo that still played movies but did nothing else. Spencer was ruthless; he had no remorse about telling Brendon get rid of several vivid and ugly hoodies he'd worn in high school. True, they barely fit now (too tight through the shoulders) but they had a certain sentimental value. Brendon had bought them with one of his Smoothie Hut paycheck, an early and minor act of rebellion against his mother, who prefered that he dressed like Mr. Rogers.

Brendon put his foot down when he found a box of cassette tapes that he'd thought he'd lost or left behind at his parents' house. The quality was awful but he'd never been happier as a kid than when he'd been locked in his room strumming his guitar into the RadioShack microphone hooked up to his ancient computer.

"You should play them for me," Spencer said, turning one dusty case over in his hands. "I bet they're good."

Brendon chuckled. "Not really so much," he said. "I'm pretty sure I wrote a song about the injustices of the cafeteria line, Spence. Not exactly compelling songwriting."

Spencer shrugged. "You were a kid. It's normal to write about that kind of stuff," he said. "You should have stuck with it."

"Being a busker isn't exactly the world's most lucrative profession," Brendon said.

"That's not what I meant," Spencer said, reaching for another cassette. He stared at the faded track listing written on the reverse. "I was in a band with a friend of mine in high school. I played drums. He thought we were going to be famous one day ..."

Brendon folded his hands in his lap. Spencer never said anything about his childhood. Brendon hoarded all the details jealously.

"And ...?"

Spencer shook his head. "I don't know," he said. He sounded confused, like after so long he'd never managed to figure out this puzzle. "Our bass player moved away and then it was Ryan’s senior year and he was worried about getting into college and stuff and then ..."

"Yeah?"

Spencer looked up, and smiled, rueful. "Then Fluffy happened."

"Oh, yeah," Brendon said. "I totally was thinking that you were in some kind of secret werewolf super group or something."

He grinned. Spencer looked agreeably annoyed.

"But, hey!" Brendon said. "You never said you could play drums. You never told me that, Spencer!"

Spencer was moving on to the next box. "I probably can't any more," he said. "It's been years and years."

"I'm going to find someone with a kit and make you play for me," Brendon said. "We could form a classic rock cover band."

He started singing Werewolves of London loudly.

Spencer rolled his eyes fondly and threw one of the decrepit pillows he'd unearthed from the next box at Brendon's head.

There were boxes all over the living room when they were finished, but Brendon thought it had been a pretty good afternoon anyway.

***

Shane came by the bar one evening when Brendon was working. It was a Thursday and very early so there was hardly another customer in the place. He sat down near the register to talk to Brendon, who was working on the crossword puzzle.

"So have you found a new place yet?" Shane asked.

"We've looked at a few," he said. They had. They'd gone twice more to look at apartments, this time with other realtors, and still Brendon had not found any place he liked as well as that first apartment.

"Oh," Shane said, significantly, and raised his eyebrows.

"Oh what?" Brendon said.

"Oh, so you're moving in with Spencer ..." Shane twisted the wrapper to his straw into a little curly-cue.

Brendon's cheeks colored. He'd never really explained to anyone that he and Spencer had been living together since the beginning -- how could he? Even Shane, his best friend, would never possibly believe the truth.

"Uh, yeah," he said. "I mean, he basically lives with me now anyway. It would be stupid to pay for two places when he's staying over almost ever night ..."

"Yeah," Shane said. "That makes sense. He’s at your place all the time. What's the deal again? His roommates suck or something?"

That was the lie they came up with, to explain why they spent all their time at Brendon's house, and no time at Spencer's imaginary apartment.

"Yeah, real assholes," Brendon said. "He met them through his college roommate or something, but they're just not cool at all. They're always having blow-out parties and leaving the kitchen a mess and it totally screws with Spencer's housekeeping zen."

Shane chuckled. He'd experienced Spencer's cleaning neurosis first hand.

"You guys are like just this far away from getting engaged," he said then, holding up his thumb and his index finger just barely apart.

Brendon stared. "What?" he said. "No we aren't. No way. We've never even talked about that and plus, like, there's only seriously three states we could even get married in. We're not relocating to Massachusetts, dude. I hate the cold weather."

"Woah, calm down," Shane said. "But really, I can't believe you've never talked about it. You're basically a domesticated old couple, and now you're moving in together ... I thought you'd be ready to uh, put a ring on it."

"Did you just try to make a Beyonce joke?" Brendon asked. “Awkward.”

Shane shrugged, sheepish. "When the woman is right, she's right."

Brendon had to step aside because the lone customer down at the other end of the bar was flagging him. He grabbed another Coors Light from the cooler and popped the lid. When he got back to his seat by the till, Shane was staring at his phone.

"Urgent communications?" Brendon asked.

"Regan wants me to meet her downtown," he said. "She and some of the people from work are going out."

"Fine, go," Brendon said, dramatically. "Abandon me!"

Shane drained his beer and set the glass down with a thump. "I think you'll make it without me, dude. Why don't you make Spencer come down here and hang with you?"

"He's uh .... he's busy," Brendon said. "Job stuff."

"Right," Shane said. "The busy life of a dog walker. I totally forgot."

Brendon frowned. He knew Shane was just kidding, just teasing, and they were close enough that it didn't matter, but maybe somehow it did bother him, that Spencer had basically a joke job. It bothered him that Spencer felt like that was his only option. He was sure, so sure, that if they tried they could totally get a copy of Spencer's birth certificate, a copy of his social security card. He knew they could figure something out; there was no need for Spencer to live on the margins of society, like some kind of pariah.

Because unless Spencer changed his mind, Brendon knew there would be no chance that they'd ever get married. Not ever. Brendon didn’t care. He’d known that from the start and really he didn’t care, but deep down inside maybe, just maybe, he was kind of a hopeless romantic. He couldn’t help but hope, even when things were hopeless.

****

They had the house nearly all packed up. Spencer cooked eggs for breakfast, with Parmesan cheese and basil and black pepper. Brendon could eat Spencer's eggs forever. They were so good. They had just two plates left unpacked that they washed after every meal, and just a pair of forks and a pair of knives.

Spencer was slumped over the table, eggs half uneaten. He was on his second cup of coffee, but it didn't seem to have kicked in yet. He'd stayed up late the night before, well after Brendon had gone to bed, sitting out on the back porch.

The moon had been full. Brendon didn't know if that mattered, or what it meant, really. Not even after so long. Sometimes Spencer didn’t pay any attention to the cycling of the moon and sometimes he got weird and silent and shied away from Brendon's touch, and Brendon couldn't discern the difference between the two reactions.

Spencer never talked about it.

"I hope we hear back from the realtor today," Brendon said. "We sent in the application and stuff like two weeks ago. What could possibly take that long?"

Spencer looked up. There were bruise-colored circles under his eyes, and his hair was lank.

"Maybe they got a lot of applications," he said. "Plus, the lease wouldn't start for another month. I bet they're trying to settle things for leases that start on the first."

Brendon frowned, disgruntled. "I really hope we get that place."

Spencer smiled then, bright and sweet, the rare vintage of smile that utterly washed his face of all weariness, all regret, all sorrow.

Brendon thought there was nothing better to see in the whole world than Spencer's smile. He really did.

"We'll get it if we're meant to get it," Spencer said. "But I think we're meant to."

"I do too," Brendon said softly. "I really do, Spence. I just ... like, I totally had a vision of our future there. It was fucking weird. I just feel like we've got to live there."

"There would be someplace else, if we didn't get that apartment," Spencer said, after a second. "It's a nice apartment, but it's not the nicest apartment ever. We'd find another place, or we could just stay here. I like it here, and Myrtle hasn’t started showing the place yet. I think she’s kind of heartbroken that you’re leaving."

Brendon frowned. He knew there were plenty of other apartments, but there would be none that suited them so perfectly, none where they could live a life so utterly free of the burden of what Brendon had been taught to expect.

But he didn't feel like arguing, so he just stirred his coffee once, twice, and pushed his eggs around his plate, and was silent.

Spencer got up and washed his plate. He had to walk Mrs. Rutherford's poodles.

"I think I'll clean out the pantry when I get home," he said. "That's it, really. Everything else is just about ready."

"I'm gonna call the real estate place today if I don't hear from them," Brendon said. "It's driving me nuts."

"Calm down," Spencer said. He put a hand on Brendon's shoulder. He leaned close. Brendon could smell the strong scent of the deodorant he wore, the faint odor of the green soap he insisted they buy. Brendon closed his eyes.

Spencer pressed his lips to Brendon's forehead. "We'll get the place," he said quietly. "You'll see."

Brendon believed him.

***  
Brendon was wasting time between classes in the computer lab. Someone sat down beside him. It was Alba, one of the women in his history class.

"Are you ready for this test?" she asked.

Brendon didn't know her well; he'd never bothered to make friends at school. Still, this was the second history class they'd taken together and they were familiar at this point.

"As ready as I'm going to get," Brendon said. "I'm still mixing up the French & Indian War and the War of 1812."

Alba rolled her eyes. "They happened sixty years apart," she said.

"I'm terrible with dates," Brendon admitted. "And I've got so much going on. I'm in the middle of moving."

Alba looked sympathetic. "That's never fun," she said.

Brendon nodded. It was weird. He was an easy guy to talk to, or at least that was what people said, but lately he'd felt so wrapped up in thinking about his future with Spencer in that apartment that his conversations had been filled with these awkward dead spaces.

"We're having a study session Tuesday," Alba said. "Some of the people from class. You should come."

Brendon shrugged. "Maybe," he said. "I might have to work."

This time she nodded, sympathetic.

What Brendon couldn't articulate was that at that moment, school was the very least of his worries. It seemed like it didn't matter at all. He'd spent months dragging his textbooks to the bar so he could work on his homework during lulls, and he'd let Spencer convince him that he had a shot at getting into some fancy university, that he had a future he needed to pursue, but now it seemed like the only thing that mattered was what he had with Spencer, was securing that future and making it so real and so good and so tangible that it could never disappear or fade.

***

They did not get the apartment.

Brendon's phone rang just as he was getting to work. He went and he sat on a case of Bud Light in the walk-in freezer. Somehow, reception in the freezer was superior to reception in the bar proper. The realtor asked if it was a good time to talk. He said it was.

There was a problem with the application, she said. The building was owned by a company with a policy of only renting to individuals who made ten times the monthly rent in income. She'd told them that. She'd told them that they day they decided to try and get the place, and she'd told them with a laugh that it was a bad time for rentals and the company was always flexible. Properties were sitting empty for months, she’d said.

"They want to rent the place.” She put her hands on the tables, long red nails clacking against the pressed wood of her cheap desk. "You'll have no problem."

But there was a problem and Brendon heard nothing but white noise for a moment as she said something about insufficient income and is there any way that you could use a guarantor?

"What?" he asked. He hadn't heard a word.

"Maybe your parents," she said. "Or Mr. Smith's parents ... maybe they could help you? Just in name only, you understand ..."

Brendon would have laughed had her words not made him feel so raw. "No," he said. "No, they wouldn't. There's nobody."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Urie," she said again. "I've tried to reason with the company but it's harder working with these big conglomerates than it is with actual people. I was on the phone with them for an hour but they won't budge on this."

For a moment, just a moment, Brendon thought maybe it was true and she had tried and someone, someone had gone to bat for him ...

But it didn't matter.

"I'm at work now," he said. His breath was a little white cloud in the cold. "Can I call you back tomorrow?"

He didn't wait for a reply before he hung up.

That night was unending. He was in a terrible mood. He snapped at one of the waitresses when she complained it was taking him too long to fill her drink orders. She looked appalled; he felt awful. It was a Friday and the bar was full and there were groups of friends out together, groups of loud young men just past college age, and couples sitting close, sipping their glasses of Pinot Noir, sipping their vodka drinks, holding hands, blissful and oblivious.

Three hundred dollars cash in his pocket at the end of the night was pretty poor consolation.

Spencer was waiting up when he got home. Spencer was curled up on the couch. He had this way -- god, he had this way of making himself look so small and so alone sometimes, and it made Brendon think about what it must have been like for him out there. Spencer pressed himself back into the corner of the couch and drew his knees up to his chest and pressed his chin down into his knees and Brendon just wanted to wraps his arms around him and keep him safe.

Now, he'd fallen asleep like that, and his head lolled to the side, and the blue uneven light of the television flickered.

Brendon tried to be quiet, but Spencer had keen hearing; it must have been some wolf thing -- Brendon never asked.

"Hey," Spencer said, smiling, rolling his shoulders back and stretching. He never woke up quickly, and his voice was still heavy and hoarse.

"Hey," Brendon said. He kicked off his sneakers without untying them and pulled off his polo shirt. It smelled like stale smoke and there was something white spilled down the front. He sat down on the couch, next to Spencer, but not so close, not close enough that they were touching.

"You've got that worried look on your face," Spencer said. "What's wrong?"

Brendon squeezed his eyes shut. He'd tried so hard all night not to think about it, but it was the only thing he'd been able to think of, even as he made Cosmos and poured beers and hunted under the counter for that last box of novelty straws.

"The realtor called me this afternoon," Brendon said.

Spencer perked up.

"We didn't get the place," he said. "They had some dumb-ass rule about income levels ... I don't know. I couldn't really talk, so I told her I'd call her tomorrow ... today. It’s after midnight now I guess."

Spencer swallowed. "Shit," he said. "Brendon, I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault," Brendon said. "It's totally not your fault."

It wasn't. Spencer's name hadn't been on the application. Spencer hadn't supplied six months worth of pay stubs and his last year's tax return and a sealed transcript from the community college verifying that he was in truth a half-time student. They’d talked about this. Brendon had known what Spencer couldn’t do.

"Maybe I can call them and get them to reconsider," Spencer said, so quietly it was as if he were thinking out loud.

Brendon's throat went tight. "No, Spence. You totally can't. It was my name on the application. It's got nothing to do with you. I need to take care of it on my own.”

Spencer's face fixed into a mean, hard grimance for just a second, and his shoulders tensed and rolled forward, hunched. Then he sighed, deep, and said, "Okay, yeah. You're right." His voice was flat.

Brendon tried a small smile. "Like you said, there will be another apartment."

Spencer did not respond. His face remained still and cold.

Everything was terrible. Brendon knew in his heart that things would not work out. He wasn’t destined to live the kind of life he’d been imagining; hadn't he spent his first twenty years being told that, in ways obvious and in ways not?

"I'm going to go upstairs and study," Brendon said. "I've got a history test."

"Okay," Spencer said. He had not moved at all, and his eyes were bright in that sharp, wolfish way they got sometimes. He didn't protest.

He wanted Spencer to tell him to stay, to fight with him about this, to demand that Brendon take it back, because in truth, Brendon didn't really believe there was nothing Spencer could do. Just by virtue of being Spencer he helped. He had made everything in Brendon's life better when he'd come, and Brendon knew it was enormously unfair to hold the Fluffy situation against him. But Spencer wasn’t a fighter, not really. He had no problem arguing about the proper way to make the bed or which Star Wars movie was best, but when it counted, he always went quiet and still and let Brendon have his way.

There was a hairline fracture in Brendon's heart. He got up slowly. He wondered if maybe he was kidding himself. In the end, Spencer was what he was, and the wolf would always be a secret that Brendon could never really know. Each foot seemed to weigh a ton as he climbed the stairs. He grabbed his history textbook and his notebooks out of his bag and he sat at the little desk that they'd gotten at Ikea that Spencer had spent one frustrated afternoon assembling. That had been such a good day, although Spencer had badly bruised his thumb with the hammer. Brendon had kissed the throbbing red spot better and later they'd made hot dogs on the grill and sat curled together on the chaise lounge and fell asleep there, outside in the cool night.

If only all days could be like that. If only life could be an unending series of such perfect moments. That's what Brendon thought they could have in that apartment. That's what he wanted: all the brightness, none of the drudgery, none of the gloom.

He valiantly struggled through thirty pages on the Louisiana Purchase. He'd been distracted in class the day they'd covered this material; his notes were interspersed with tiny stick-figure doodles of him and Spencer playing Frisbee. He heard Spencer downstairs, moving through the rooms, his stride unusually heavy. He heard the fridge open and close. He heard water running from a tap.

Time was all he was asking, really. He hoped Spencer knew that. He could get over this upset, knew that really it wasn't so momentous as he made it seem, but he just asked one night to nurse his self-pity.

There wasn't much about Louis and Clarke that held Brendon's attention, although he appreciated the print-out of an article exploring an alternate history of their journey, and the role native peoples had played in exploring the American West. He bitched about school all the time but really he felt like it was making him smarter and a better person. He always complained when Spencer hassled him about applying to transfer, but secretly it made him feel warm and happy that Spencer really believed he was smart enough to get accepted somewhere as good as UCLA.

By quarter to one the words were starting to swim on the page. Brendon placed a pencil in the book to mark his spot and crept downstairs to get some water. Spencer was not in the living room. As he stood at the tap filling his glass, Brendon looked out the window into the back yard. Spencer was sitting on the steps, elbows on his knees.

Brendon could give him space, too. He was learning that. He wasn't always able to fix everything, even though he sometimes tried so hard that they both ended up angry and exhausted. Sometimes, Spencer needed to fix himself.

The cold water woke him and he powered through another few dozen pages before he couldn't fight exhaustion any longer.

Spencer would sleep on the couch, he thought. He did sometimes, if they'd had an argument, if they'd gotten into some dumb fight about taking out the recycling, or why Spencer insisted on using a fake name for his dog walking business or something else inane. It had made Brendon furious the first time, but he knew now there were times when Spencer needed to be alone. He knew there were times when he didn’t want Brendon to lean on him.

Brendon got a pillow from the bed and a spare blanket, folded them neatly and put them on the end of the couch. Spencer was stubborn as hell and would not come in until Brendon went to bed, just to prove a point. He was still sitting out on the deck. No telling how long he would stay out there.

Brendon brushed his teeth and changed into his night clothes. He turned off the lamp on the desk and curled up in bed. It wasn't a large bed, but it always felt too big without Spencer. He listened to the traffic passing out on the street. He imagined he heard Spencer open the door and come back inside. There was a very particular, very noisy way that back door squeaked. The noise was amplified a hundred thousand times, and Brendon was warm under the blankets, and he wasn't sure if he'd heard the noise or just dreamed it, because he wasn't even sure if he was awake or asleep.

His alarm woke him the next morning. He closed his eyes. Spencer had purposefully picked out the most shrill and irritating tone and plugged the alarm in across the room so one of them would be forced to get out of bed. That was a struggle, sometimes. Brendon most unwillingly threw off the covers and stumbled over to the dresser.

It was quarter after eight. Outside the sun shone irritatingly brightly. Brendon closed his eyes and tried to see if he still felt like the entire world was about to come to a sudden and violent end. He was still bummed about the apartment, yeah, and a little ashamed of what he'd said to Spencer, but the world hasn't ended overnight. He could go on.

Spencer was not asleep on the couch downstairs. The blanket was still folded. Brendon frowned. He couldn't smell anything; it wasn't like Spencer not to start a pot of coffee. He glanced outside. The car was still in the driveway. He knew Spencer didn't have any dogs to walk that morning.

The kitchen was empty. Brendon's stomach knotted itself tight again. He had to steady himself with one hand against the counter. Every inch of his skin felt too tight. There was something on the back deck. Outside, the air was still fresh with the coolness of morning. A bird was making some stupid noise somewhere in the brush. Spencer's clothes were on the back porch, neatly folded, the tee shirt he had worn yesterday, his jeans, everything. His shoes sat side by side next to the pile.

Brendon couldn't move. He couldn't think. He grabbed the tee shirt and held it to his face. It smelled like Spencer, just like him. It smelled like his stupid soap. He wasn't crying. It was too much for tears. There was nothing he could think of doing that would make this make any sense.

Spencer was gone.

Spencer was gone. He’d left because of the cruel horrible things that Brendon had said, and Brendon had no way to find him.

***  
He had class. He took a shower and got dressed and got in the car and drove to class. He sat near the back of the lecture hall and got out his notebook. He stared straight ahead. He did not hear a single word the professor said.

The only thing he could think of was Spencer. He imagined all the many awful things that could have happened: Spencer, hit by a car, hurt by some vicious wild animal, hungry, dirty, alone, chased, hunted. He hadn't eaten breakfast and hungry and fear made his stomach ache. All the awful possibilities rode merry-go-round through his mind. And there was the worst possibility of all, the one thing he feared the most: he would never see Spencer again.

One class was all he could endure. He had ceramics in the afternoon; the teacher loved him, so he went to her office and explained that his dog had run away, and that he needed to go look for him. The lie made him feel even more ill but he didn't know what else to say. Ms. Greyson was an animal lover. She looked concerned and told him not to worry, of course, and besides he was already done with all of his projects for the semester.

He drove home, but the house was a torment. Everywhere there were boxes labeled in Spencer's stupidly neat handwriting. Everywhere there were reminders of Spencer: his shoes by the front door, his coffee mug, a dumb note he'd written Brendon once when he'd taken the car, assuring him that no self-respecting car thief would take his aged Civic and that there was no reason for alarm. Spencer had been teasing, but he'd signed the note with his name scrawled and then 'xoxo!'. It wasn't a confession of love exactly but back in those early days when Brendon hadn't even known if Spencer could fall in love with him, it had seemed nearly that good.

He couldn't imagine where Spencer would go. He had no friends that weren't Brendon's friends too, except maybe a few of the people whose dogs he walked. And Brendon knew he wouldn't go to them. Spencer kept those people at arm's length, as he did everyone who wasn't Brendon. He had never said as much out loud but Brendon knew he was terrified that his secret was obvious, and that someone would find out. He didn’t know what Spencer thought would happen. For one awful wild moment Brendon thought about calling Spencer's parents. He'd given Spencer the newspaper clipping about his younger sisters for Christmas, but he'd never revealed exactly how much information he'd found on Spencer's family, poking around in public records on the computers at school between classes. He knew Spencer thought that part of his life was gone, that there was no route back, nothing left to connect the sullen, pudgy-cheeked boy whose school picture was in the newspaper articles Brendon had found to the man he was now. Brendon suspected that Spencer would not be happy if he knew how much Brendon had been prying, but for a while it had been a kind of obsession; he'd just wanted to know, and Spencer was never willing to tell.

But there was less than no chance that Spencer would go to his parents' house. No chance he'd go to Shane or Zack; they had been Brendon's friends first and Spencer had strange ideas about loyalty. There was nobody else.

Brendon had to do something so he called the local animal shelter. He called and he asked if anyone had brought in a large dog, clean and well groomed, black and brown fur, a hundred and ten pounds. Nobody had seen such a dog. He breathed in and out slowly to keep calm as the woman on the other end of the line took down his information, promising to call if they found anything.

He had work that night. He couldn't call out. Besides, the distraction was welcome. He couldn't concentrate. He had to go into the supply closet at one point because his eyes started to water after he'd been reminded, inadvertently, of the first time Spencer had come and visited him at work, how Spencer had sat at the bar, arms crossed, and drank virgin Shirley Temples with too many cherries in them until his lips were stained bright red. He’d amused Brendon with snarky rants under his breath about the other patrons. Brendon inhaled and exhaled three times to sooth the burn in his chest and he went back out to work. He explained his red eyes with a laugh and a shrug of his shoulders and a hurried mention of allergies.

His shift ended and he went home. It was well after midnight. The front door was locked. No lights were on. He had held out some faint hope he might come home and find Spencer drowsing on the couch in his ugly old sweatpants, waiting for Brendon to get home before he went up to bed, but the living room was dark and the television was quiet and it had been nearly twenty four hours and Spencer was still gone.

Brendon didn't have many pictures of himself and Spencer together; he didn't own a camera and Spencer was weirdly skittish about getting his picture taken. But Regan had given him a stack of snapshots of the two of them that Share had taken at barbecues and parties and just lazy summer afternoons sitting in the back yard.

These Brendon took out of his desk drawer. He'd wanted to get a few of them framed but when he'd made that suggestion Spencer had grimaced and changed the subject and, well, Brendon could take a hint. But he loved the pictures of the two of them together, no matter what Spencer though. It was concrete evidence, although Brendon did not know of what. In his favorite, he and Spencer were sitting thigh to thigh on the couch. Brendon's eyes were closed and he was laughing and Spencer was smiling very broadly,his arm resting along the back of the couch.

There was one picture, at the bottom of the pile, of Spencer as a wolf. He was sitting at Brendon's feet, his tongue lolling. That picture was so old; they’d retired Fluffy not long afterwards. He'd never explained to Shane exactly what had happened to his pet dog; the topic had never come up. But that photograph gave Brendon an idea.

He made posters. It was kind of awful. He cropped himself out of the picture and made posters that said 'Have you seen this dog? (Answers to Fluffy!!)'. He made twenty photocopies at the drugstore and asked if he could hang one up by the front door. He stapled copies to telephone poles. He took a copy to the PetSmart over near the mall and pinned it to their notice board.

It was an idiotic idea, but it was the only idea he had. Spencer wasn't a fucking pet dog; he wasn't going to get caught or lured into someone's yard by an unattended bowl of cat food. He was practically the smartest person Brendon knew. It was just that there was no other avenue Brendon had at his disposal that would possibly lead him back to Spencer.

Sweaty and irritated, he called Shane on the drive home.

"What's up dude?"

"Eh," Brendon said. "I got into a fight with Spencer."

"Woah," Shane said. "The perfect couple no longer, huh?"

"We're not a perfect couple," Brendon said, peevishly. The traffic light in front of him turned red. He sighed. "Shane, I really fucked up. He left two nights ago. I haven't talked to him since."

"Is he at his apartment?" Shane asked.

"Uh," Brendon said. "No, he's not. Nobody's seen him since he left my place."

"I'm sure he's fine, Bren," Shane said. "He probably went to stay with like, relatives. Didn't you say he had a sister or something?"

Brendon made a worried noise. He wasn't paying attention to the traffic light; it had turned green. The car behind him honked to prompt him to drive.

"I guess," he said.

"Why don't you come over here?" Shane asked. "We can hang. Spencer will probably call as soon as you stop obsessing over it."

"Yeah, okay," Brendon said, only because he couldn't bear the thought of going back to the empty house again, certain that Spencer would still be gone.

Shane and Regan had beer and were comforting. Regan sat on the counter swinging her legs while Shane made burritos for dinner. Brendon sat at their kitchen table, staring morosely into the mouth of his bottle.

"So what happened?" Regan asked.

Brendon shrugged. "I screwed up," he said.

"That's kind of the impression I got," Shane said. "Care to be any more specific?"

Brendon felt miserable. Shane and Regan were his closest friends, and he couldn't tell them the truth. He wanted to, though. He really did.

"You know we've been looking for a new place, right? Well, we found this totally awesome apartment downtown. It was perfect. Way nicer than any other place we looked at and just ... I thought we would be so good there. Like, if we just got that apartment everything would be for real."

"It's not real now?" Regan asked, confused. "You two have been together forever, Brendon. What do you mean?"

"Not like that," Brendon said. "I don't know." He couldn't articulate all the uncertainty, the stupid desire to have his parents’ approval, his worry that what he had with Spencer wasn’t adequate, that he was failing in some significant way. "I just ... it felt like if we got this place we could start a life together, instead of whatever we've got now.”

Shane took a sip of his beer, but neither he nor Regan seemed to find this explanation entirely satisfactory.

"We didn't get the apartment," Brendon said. "The lady said my income wasn't high enough or some bullshit and Spencer was going to call and complain, and I told him there was nothing he could do about it and it wasn't any of his business."

Regan frowned. "But you just said you wanted this place because you wanted to start a life together ... Brendon, I'm sorry but I don't get it."

Brendon made a frustrated noise. "Spencer couldn't put his name on the lease."

"Is his credit fucked up or something?" Shane asked.

Brendon nodded. That was a perfectly viable explanation. "Yeah," he said. "Student loans or something. Whatever, you know? But I was just so pissed that he was upset. I wanted to get that place. I just felt like ... I guess I just felt like I've worked so hard and tried to make things so good and people are still fucking throwing up every obstacle in my way."

"That really sucks, man," Shane said. "But you totally know it's not really Spencer's fault. I mean, I'm assuming you guys talked about whatever the deal is with his financial situation before you decided to move in together, right?"

"Yeah," Brendon said. "I knew it going in. I was just ... disappointed. But right now I wouldn't care if we ended up living in some shit hole next to the railroad tracks, with mice and fleas and roaches. I just want him back."

"He'll come back," Regan said. "The first time I saw you two together I could tell how into each other you were. You’ve got that creepy ‘fated for each other’ vibe going on. You just need to give him some time, and he'll come back to you."

Shane drove Brendon’s car home for him around quarter to eleven. Regan followed behind. Brendon had had too much to drink and was morose. He appreciated Shane and Regan's encouragement, but he still felt like the world had basically ended. Regan beeped the horn as she and Shane drove away. Brendon waved, dispiritedly.

The house was dark. The doors were locked. Spencer still had not come home. Brendon kicked off his sneakers without untying them. He collapsed over the arm of the couch and faceplanted into the cushions. The remote was just barely out of reach. He stretched and his fingertips grazed it. He didn't have the energy to move. He wanted to never leave the couch again, but the prospect of laying in the dark with no distraction was horrible. He sat up, fractionally, and got the remote.

The television was set to CNN. The stupid, chiming theme music reminded Brendon horribly of Spencer. Everything did. He missed Spencer more than he could articulate, more than he had imagined he would. Spencer had to be missing him too. The prospect that Spencer had left without hesitation -- had been waiting, maybe, for a chance to leave -- that, Brendon could not tolerate.

He was woken by his cell phone ringing. He fumbled blindly for a moment. "Hello?" he mumbled.

"Hi," the man on the other end of the line said. "I'm calling about the lost dog."

That was like a shot of adrenaline right into his veins. He scribbled the directions on the back of a magazine. His hands were shaking.

He drove a recklessly, unsettled by the phone call, unsettled by the thought of finding Spencer. If he did find him -- what would he even do? Bring him home? That seemed like some sort of awful betrayal of trust. He didn't own Spencer. He had no right to make Spencer stay. If he wanted to leave, if a cold, hungry, dangerous life alone was preferable to a life with Brendon, then Spencer had the right to make that choice. Brendon just didn't understand. He just didn't.

The streets were empty. The morning was misty and the traffic lights had unearthly halos. The man who had called had given an address way outside of town. He'd found a dog scavenging in his trash the night before that matched the description Brendon had posted. He'd coaxed the stray into his garage, and he'd called Brendon. Would Spencer let himself be taken like that again? He'd come with Brendon, but he had been bleeding and hurt. Otherwise, he probably would never have let Brendon come close.

He parked the car and swallowed. The man was waiting outside. They exchanged stilted pleasantries and walked around the corner of the house to the door to the garage. It was dark and cool, and smelled musty. The dog was curled in the corner, on a pile of blankets.

It wasn't Spencer.

"That's a shame," the man said. "He's a nice dog. Someone took care of him."

They were crouched down, and the man was scratching behind the dog's ear. He was an older dog, going a little grey around the muzzle, and he was not as large as Spencer.

"I bet someone is looking for him," Brendon said. "Right buddy? Someone somewhere misses you a lot, huh?"

Brendon stopped and got a cup of coffee on the way home. He didn't need it; his hands shook without the help of caffeine and his chest felt tight and constricted. He just wanted to smell it, maybe. He wanted to remember waking up and to the strong odor of coffee, the unquiet noises of Spencer going about his business as he let Brendon sleep. Those were the things he would miss: those specific moments when he felt like through whatever accidents of fate their two disparate lives had become woven tightly together. That was the thing Brendon never thought he'd be lucky enough to find. He thought now, though, he didn't care if he ever met anyone else ever again. He didn't care if his life ever met with his parent’s approval. He just wanted Spencer to choose to stay.

He fell back asleep when he got home. He set his cup of coffee on the kitchen counter and stared at the stove for a second, like he could will food into being if he thought about it hard enough. He was hungry, but he was too tired and too miserable to cook. He flopped back down on the couch, and pressed on the television. The top stories on the news portended disaster. He couldn't stand to the phony grave voices of the anchors. He pressed the mute button.

He dozed. He dreamed some strange dream about going to a big party at his parents' house. He didn't know what the party was for. There were green and tangerine streamers hung up everywhere, and lots of white folding chairs set up on the too-big, too-green lawn. Spencer was supposed to have come with him, but he was missing. Brendon looked in every room, and in the dream, there were more rooms in his parents' house than he could count. He felt like if he just opened one more door, he would find Spencer there ...

He woke out of the dream and laid on his back staring at the ceiling. It was almost noon. He had to get up. He had finals to study for, and work again that night.

There was a noise, coming from the kitchen, a funny sort of 'scritch-scritch' noise Brendon couldn't place. He hadn't left the kettle on. The window was not open. He couldn't see anything at first.

And then he looked out the back door and he saw Spencer there, pawing.

Brendon fumbled with the lock. His fingers were clumsy in his haste. He opened the door. Spencer tilted his head. His ears drooped. He stepped into the kitchen. He was not hurt. He wasn't bleeding or maimed or broken. His eyes were bright, and if his fur was a little dirty, well ... Brendon could allow that. The most important thing was that Spencer was okay -- everything else was diminished beside that realization.

Spencer shook his coat, and in that strange, silky-smoky way that Brendon would never get used to, he shifted back to human. His feet were filthy, and his eyes were fixed on a spot on the floor.

"Hey," he said slowly.

Brendon swallowed. He bounced once on the balls of his feet. Maybe ... maybe they were still fighting. Maybe Spencer was still mad. He didn't care. He took a step forward and wrapped his arms around Spencer and pressed his nose into Spencer's breastbone.

"Hey," he mumbled.

Spencer's hand came up to his neck. He leaned forward into Brendon's hug. The house was hushed. Spencer's chest fell and rose. His breath was slightly ragged. The tips of his fingers were rough.

"Hey," Brendon said again. “You came back.”

Spencer looked at him, smiling, and laughed a little, and some tight mean thing that had been wrapped around Brendon's heart loosened and let go.

“Of course I did,” Spencer said softly.

***

Later they sat on the couch in the living room and ate toast and bacon from plates balanced carefully on their knees. Spencer had showered and his hair was wet and his skin was rosy. They hadn't talked yet. Brendon was too grateful to be coherent. He wanted Spencer to know.

"I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come back," he said, staring down at the coffee table.

"You would have been fine," Spencer said, quickly and with conviction. He put his hand on Brendon's knee. "Brendon, you would have been absolutely fine. You would have been better ..."

"No," Brendon said. "Definitely not. I would have been a mess. I was a mess. I missed you so badly and I couldn't think of what to do. You were just gone, and I had no way to reach you, no way to call you ... nothing."

"Sorry," Spencer said. He stared at the table too. "Sorry. I should have said something. I just ... Brendon, I know how badly you wanted that apartment. You work so hard and you deserve to have a good life, a normal life. You deserve to have that apartment. You're never going to have that while I'm here."

"No," Brendon said. "I don't want that. I mean, I thought I did. I thought I wanted the kind of apartment I could show off to my parents. I thought I wanted a life that would match this picture in my head, but I really don't care. It doesn't matter. I just want you to stay."

Spencer made a small, miserable noise. "I'm never going to be able to help with that kind of stuff. I'm never going to have a real job or a real future."

Brendon couldn't stand to hear that. He set his plate down and wrapped his arms around Spencer again. He held him as close as he could.

"You don't feel dead," he said. “Still feel pretty alive.”

Spencer rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean."

"I told you I don't care," Brendon said. "We could live in a cardboard box. We could go build a shack in the woods and live there, if you had some wolf-y urge. I just want to be with you. I want you to want to stay."

Spencer exhaled. "I do," he said. "I don't want to go. I love you. I never, ever felt like I belonged anywhere until I met you. I just don't want you to suffer because of me."

"It's not suffering," Brendon said. "And if it is, I'm willing.” He swallowed. “You do have a future. It’s with me."

Spencer closed his eyes. His eyelashes were long and very dark against the pale skin of his cheeks. Brendon thought that there was nothing he would rather see than Spencer, no person he would ever rather be near, no voice he would ever rather hear.

"I can't help what I am," Spencer said quietly. "I don't know why it happened. I used to think it was punishment, because I was so fucking ungrateful for everything I had as a kid. You make me feel like it was a blessing, because it brought me to you."

"How did it happen?" Brendon asked, quietly. "I want to know. I know you don't like to talk about it, but it's hard for me to understand if you don't tell me. They don’t offer Werewolves 101 at school."

Spencer laughed. “I guess not." His face mellowed. "There’s a lot I don’t know, honestly. It's not a very happy story. I was sixteen years old, and I was going camping with my family. We went every summer, but that year I would have given anything not to have to go …”


End file.
